Greedy

I flew through this book, partly because I did identify with a lot of the experiences and partly because I am a trash Zillennial so Jen's sense of humor soaked in internet memes and self deprecation really worked for me. There were several really poignant essays and concepts: The Power Dynamic, Neon Sweater. Knots (all in a row!), A Queer Love Story. There were also resonant parts of other essays. Jen's memoir encompasses queerness but also privilege, politics, parriarchy, technology etc., a kind of overlap that feels necessary to me.

Some small complaints. Jen pulls influence from Shiri Eisner whose book similarly has some resonant points and also some big flops. Jen also apparently has only had exclusively bad experiences with lesbians, and makes several offhanded quips about how lesbians don't like them. (These are mostly jokes and obviously the author's experiences are their own, but still.) (I'm disgustingly in love with a lesbian and thus defensive. Lesbians are great! Dating in New York just apparently sucks no matter which genders you're into.)

Some other reviewers have mentioned Jen's passages about privilege and unlearning. I feel split on these because while on one hand I think it's refreshing to have someone own up to being a clueless white person who did racist things and is trying to do better, and on the other hand the inserts felt performative in some ways (especially because... she is writing and making money on a book in a space/platform that QTPOC authors are often denied). But also, writing this book without acknowledgment of privilege or fuckups or the impacts of racism & race on queerness would be worse, and nonfiction books written explicitly about bisexuality already seem scarce. I'm not sure white people “unlearning” in public forums/platforms is ever not going to be somehow performative. For this reason I would say that anyone who doesn't want to deal with “unlearning” white people can skip this one, but there are essays and moments worth reading if you don't mind (or if you are or have been that same cringey “unlearning” white person... I have been, probably still am).

Jen doesn't write anything more revelatory than the queer theorists she often quotes. But couched in the narratives of their experiences, I resonated with many of the essays in a visceral way that sometimes doesn't happen for me with theory.